Tomorrow will be better
by EmBonIrisH94
Summary: This will be a little different from the show. Iris is away in Coast City in her finale semester of Grad School and this story will be told from her POV as she struggles with depression. Her and Barry have kind of drifted apart but will soon rekindle their friendship and more. I thought it'd be interesting to write Iris very differently from how we've all come to know her


Iris had awoken from her sleep for what felt like the one hundredth time. She had reached over to check her phone on her bed counter and fell back on to her pillow in annoyance when she'd discovered that it was still only four am. Just as the many nights before it, Iris was again going to go without sleep. She had decided to get up and find her dress robe, which was lying on the floor of her dimly lit college dorm and decided to get some work done. She was in the final year of graduate school and with her final dissertation still left to do she thought it better to get on top it while the deadline was still some time away. The sleepless nights were leaving her exhausted throughout the day so she figured it was best to get things done in the morning. Iris couldn't even remember the last time she had a good night's rest. "Probably junior year of college" she thought as she let out a yawn. She knew she wasn't going to get much work done today just like most days, but she thought she should at least check her emails and hope no deadline catches her by surprise again.

She slumped into her desk moving all the mess aside and opened her laptop. She thought about cleaning her room but opted against it. She had taken a sip from the coffee she made yesterday morning whilst going through her emails. There were dozens of unread messages, quite a bit of them from her father. While she felt a tinge of guilt she ignored them anyways. She continued scrolling through her emails but stopped abruptly as one caught her attention. The title of the email simply read "Hey" but it was the name below that that caused her heart to sink. "Barry" she whispered and the knot in her stomach tightened. She usually would have been glad to see a message from him but instead a feeling of disquiet washed over her. It had been years since she last saw him and while she did wonder how we was doing she was apprehensive over opening the email. They were once completely inseparable in high school but since Iris moved halfway across the country they rarely saw one another. At first, they kept in regular contact but soon Iris began to reply a lot less frequently and Barry began to send far fewer messages. And now she was no longer excited to hear from him. Iris decided against reading the email and crawled back into bed.

Seeing his name just reminded her how different she was and just how unhappy that made her feel. Talking to Barry was once so easy but now thinking of a way to reply to him filled her with dread. The thought of Barry knowing the type of person she became made her face puff up and her eyes fill up. It had been almost a week since she's last showered even longer still since she's left her apartment. except for the few words she exchanged with her flatmate she hadn't spoken to anyone in days. She brought her knees into her chest and wept. The thought of how happy she once had been and all the fond memories she had with him but that only served to worsen her mood. She thought going to college would allow her to be more herself without her overbearing father restricting her instead it made her feel like a lesser version of that person. Barry sent her an email perhaps once every few months and while she understood why it still made her feel low. She didn't always reply and when she did she kept it vague and short. Yet his lack of correspondence made her feel as though her once closest friend cared very little for her now.

His emails were usually cheery and upbeat and Iris felt that it would only worsen her slump if she read it. But that didn't mean she wasn't curious as she wondered what he'd tell her this time. Last time she spoke to him he began working as a CSI in her dad's precinct. She hoped it had nothing to do with her dad, she didn't need more people worrying about her. "I'm fine after all," she reassured herself, "I'm just tired and need a break to myself." Her father however cannot be so easily reassured. He had noticed her demeanour had changed when she was home during the holidays and Iris dodging his calls didn't' help put his mind at ease. She brushed off his concerns however, blaming her sullen mood on a fight with her boyfriend. The very boyfriend she had broken up with several months earlier. But Iris had grown weary of trying to convince her father that she was okay and opted with ignoring him for the most part. She felt bad though, after all the two had been very close since her mother had passed away a decade ago. She did miss him and her little brother Wally but with the way they've been looking at her lately she thought it best to just keep a distance.

Iris sat upright in her bed wiping away the tears from her face. "I can't keep avoiding everyone, maybe I should..." her thoughts drifted away as she turned to lay back on her side and pull the covers in on her. The thought of Barry knowing how bad she was doing was too much for her to even consider reading the email. He had never seen this side of her, after all it was always her comforting and reassuring him ever since his mother was killed when they were children. "Plus," she thought, "we barely even know each other now, well at least he barely knows me now." The last time they saw each other was after their sophomore year of college and she still felt herself then. Part of her wished he hadn't enjoyed college as much as he did since he spent a lot of his time including the holidays with his new friends. Her college experience however wasn't so eventful, at least not compared to the fun the two of them shared in high school. These memories which were once comforting now hollowed her out and without notice the tears had reappeared.


End file.
